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GA Voting Records Legal Fight Escalates02/05 06:27
Officials in Georgia's Fulton County said Wednesday they have asked a
federal court to order the FBI to return ballots and other documents from the
2020 election that it seized last week, escalating a voting battle as President
Donald Trump says he wants to "take over" elections from Democratic-run areas
with the November midterms on the horizon.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Officials in Georgia's Fulton County said Wednesday they
have asked a federal court to order the FBI to return ballots and other
documents from the 2020 election that it seized last week, escalating a voting
battle as President Donald Trump says he wants to "take over" elections from
Democratic-run areas with the November midterms on the horizon.
The FBI had searched a warehouse near Atlanta where those records were
stored, a move taken after Trump's persistent demands for retribution over
claims, without evidence, that fraud cost him victory in Georgia. Trump's
election comment came in an interview Monday with a conservative podcaster and
the Republican president reaffirmed his position in Oval Office remarks the
next day, citing f raud allegations that numerous audits, investigations and
courts have debunked.
Officials in heavily Democratic Fulton County referenced those statements in
announcing their legal action at a time of increasing anxiety over Trump's
plans for the fall elections that will determine control of Congress.
"This case is not only about Fulton County," said the county chairman, Robb
Pitts. "This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation."
In a sign of that broader concern, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said this
week that he once doubted Trump would intervene in the midterms but now "the
notional idea that he will ask his loyalists to do something inappropriate,
beyond the Constitution, scares the heck out of me."
The White House has scoffed at such fears, noting that Trump did not
intervene in the 2025 off-year elections despite some Democratic predictions he
would. But the president's party usually loses ground in midterm elections and
Trump has already tried to tilt the fall races in his direction.
During an interview with NBC News that aired Wednesday, the president said
he will trust Republican losses in the midterms "if the results are honest."
It's a strategy Trump has regularly used ahead of elections, suggesting that a
loss would only be due to some type of fraud.
Democratic election officials plan for interference in the midterms
Democratic state election officials have reacted to Trump's statements, the
seizure of the Georgia election materials and his aggressive deployment of
federal officers into Democratic-leaning cities by planning for a wide range of
possible scenarios this fall. That includes how they would respond if
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were stationed outside polling
places.
They also have raised concerns about U.S. Department of Justice lawsuits,
mostly targeting Democratic states, seeking detailed voter data that includes
dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. Secretaries of state have
raised concerns that the administration is building a database it can use to
potentially disenfranchise voters in future elections.
Trump and his allies have long fixated on Fulton County, Georgia's most
populous, since he narrowly lost the state to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. In
the weeks after that election, Trump called Georgia's secretary of state,
Republican Brad Raffensperger, urged him to help "find" the 11,780 ballots that
would enable Trump to be declared the Georgia winner of the state and raised
the prospect of a "criminal offense" if the official failed to comply.
Raffensperger did not change the vote tally, and Biden won Georgia's 16
electoral votes. Days later, rioters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,
and tried to prevent the official certification of Biden's victory. When Trump
returned to the presidency in January 2025, he pardoned more than 1,000 charged
in that siege.
"The president himself and his allies, they refuse to accept the fact that
they lost," Pitts said. "And even if he had won Georgia, he would still have
lost the presidency."
Pitts defended the county's election practices and said Fulton has conducted
17 elections since 2020 without any issues.
'The results will be the same,' says Georgia election official
A warrant cover sheet provided to the county includes a list of items that
the agents were seeking related to the 2020 general election: all ballots,
tabulator tapes from the scanners that tally the votes, electronic ballot
images created when the ballots were counted and then recounted, and all voter
rolls.
The FBI drove away with hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents.
County officials say they were not told why the federal government wanted the
documents.
The county is also asking the court to unseal the sworn statement from a law
enforcement agent that was presented to the judge who approved the search
warrant.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the county's motion.
"What they're doing with the ballots that they have now, we don't know, but
if they're counted fairly and honestly, the results will be the same," Pitts
said.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's director of national intelligence, was at the Fulton
search last week, and Democrats in Congress have questioned the propriety of
her presence because the search was a law enforcement, not intelligence, action.
In a letter to top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees
Monday, Gabbard said Trump asked her to be there "under my broad statutory
authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to
election security."
During the NBC News interview, Trump said he didn't know why Gabbard was in
Fulton County, but suggested without providing evidence that other countries
were meddling in elections: "A lot of the cheating, it's international
cheating."
Trump pushes for federal control of elections
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the president's
"take over" remarks, which included a vague reference to "15 places" that
should be targeted, were a reference to the SAVE Act, legislation that would
tighten proof of citizenship requirements. Republicans want to bring it up for
a vote in Congress.
But in his remarks that day, Trump did not cite the proposal. Instead, he
claimed that Democratic-controlled places such as Atlanta, which falls mainly
in Fulton County, have "horrible corruption on elections. And the federal
government should not allow that."
The Constitution vests states with the ability to administer elections.
Congress can add rules for federal races. One of Trump's earliest second-term
actions was an executive order that tried to rewrite voting rules nationwide.
Judges have largely blocked it because it violates the Constitution.
Trump contended that states were "agents of the federal government to count
the votes. If they can't count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody
else should take over."
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Wednesday said he supported the SAVE Act but
not Trump's desire for a federal takeover. "Nationalizing elections and picking
15 states seems a little off strategy," Tillis told reporters.
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